**Halo Wars 2 — The Foundry: capture the Scarab and keep it alive**

**Halo Wars 2 — The Foundry: capture the Scarab and keep it alive** **Main campaign, mission 10. Mission spoilers.** Getting a Scarab does not mean the rest of the army has become decoration. It means you have something powerful enough to break through the route, and valuable enough that you need to protect it properly. The Foundry is an escort mission with a very large escort target. Give it anti-air support, keep repairs available and use its beam on the enemies and structures it is well suited to destroy. **Reach the repair site** Advance from the opening fight with Alice, Douglas and the supporting force. Deal with the Blisterbacks along the approach rather than keep the army clustered under their artillery. Clear the production installation on the route if you are completing that optional objective. At the Scarab repair site, defeat the Scarab Commander and his support. Keep your units firing from range while managing the additional threats around the slope. Once the encounter is over, the story sequence gives you control of the Scarab. The first Phoenix Log, **Enduring Conviction Battle Reports**, is among the debris beside the repair pit. Collect it before leaving the site. [Opening and repair-site route](https://t.co/pft7hbCF3x), [log reference](https://t.co/Hga6x2nFIX) **Break through and build** Use the Scarab to destroy the amber barricade and clear the route to the next Banished base. Keep the smaller force close enough to remove threats attacking the Scarab. Hunters and hostile aircraft need an answer besides waiting for the big walker to turn toward everything itself. Destroy the base and establish your own on the cleared plot. Build income and production, add anti-air defenses and prepare replacements. Repair the Scarab before continuing. A large health bar can hide how much damage it has already taken until the next fight starts. Separate the Scarab into its own selection. That makes it easier to stop or retreat it while the escort deals with something dangerous. The entire force does not need to turn around because one supporting aircraft needs repair. **Two skulls depend on the Scarab** - **Wuv Woo:** keep the Scarab alive. - **Sugar Cookies:** keep its health above one quarter. For the second requirement, aim to keep it well clear of that threshold throughout the mission. Letting it nearly die and repairing afterward is a poor way to attempt a health-preservation challenge. [Skull conditions](https://t.co/ek4uRDyHP5) Bring repair support and use Restoration Drones when it is taking damage. Pull it back when necessary rather than continue a losing exchange just because it is larger than everything shooting at it. **Clear the optional production sites** The mission has three Banished production facilities to cripple. One lies on the approach before the Scarab; the remaining sites are part of the onward sweep after establishing your base. Use the side route into the basin containing the optional Banished minibase. Destroy it and collect **The Snake That Eats the Tail**, the second Phoenix Log, from the cleared site. The log is not at the Scarab repair pit with the first one. [Second collectible](https://t.co/Hga6x2nFIX) Continue toward the larger Banished positions with the escort intact. The mission's timer means you need to keep progressing, but progression is not the same thing as sending a damaged Scarab ahead without its support. Fight, repair, replace losses and move the whole force to the next position. **Attack the final fortress** Bring anti-air support onto the final platform and use the Scarab against ground troops and buildings. Focus the smaller units on enemies that threaten the walker. Support powers can help break a crowded defense before the Scarab gets surrounded. After the main base falls, clear the surviving Banished troops to finish the mission. Keep protecting the Scarab during that cleanup; the collapse of a headquarters is not permission to stop watching its health. The optional fortress objective asks for destruction in under twenty minutes. Treat that as its own timed challenge. A first run exploring production sites and collectibles is better used to learn the route than to promise every objective at once. **Bonus-counter planning** The mission includes Scarab squad kills and structure destruction, Blisterback destruction, and Banshee kills with infantry or Wolverines. Assign targets accordingly if you want those bonuses. Hijacking an enemy vehicle is useful for the army, but it is not automatically the same as destroying that vehicle for a destruction counter. On Heroic or Legendary, preserve the specialist escort rather than fill the entire army with damage units and no support. The Scarab already gives you a great deal of firepower. What it needs from the rest of the army is a way to keep using that firepower without being overwhelmed.